In known CAMs, data is selected based on contents, rather than physical location. This function is useful for many applications, especially when performing a look-up for the purposes of mapping a long identification word data to a shorter word data. This operation is required in many telecommunications (telecom) functions, including Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) address translation.
Often, system storage requirements exceed the number of entries stored on a single CAM chip. Multiple chips are then required, and it is necessary that a means be developed to cascade these multiple chips such that they may be searched as a single entity. An appropriate "user-friendly" cascading capability enables the same chip to be used in a range of systems with different capacity requirements, and allows for easy expandability and scalability, as well.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,568,416 granted to K. Kawana et al on Oct. 22, 1996 discloses an associative memory in which multiple CAM chips are cascaded by propagating a result address and status through all chips in the cascade. Each chip contains a status register for itself, and another for all upstream chips. It also discloses means of identifying the last device in the cascade, and separate storage areas for common and unique data entries.